Julie is seven years old. Julie is DID too. When she was four her daddy came in her room after everyone was asleep. That was the first time. He did not act like her daddy and what he did scared her and made her feel like a bad bad girl but she was not sure why.

Julie imagined things like getting a horse all her own or going on vacation to Disney World. That is the kind of things seven-year-old kids can imagine and know how to act and feel about. What daddy was doing was something Julie would never have imagined. She wanted to ask daddy what he was doing and him to stop and hug her and make her feel better. But she couldn’t because he was telling her to be quiet because he loved her. She did not know how to act or what to do. It hurt in her heart very bad.

What scared Julie the most was she did not know what daddy was doing or why and so she could not imagine what might happen next. It was the same situation kids have when they are afraid of the dark, only much much worse because there really was a monster here and she did not know what he would do next, and the monster was her daddy. So Julie stopped thinking, she completely stopped paying attention and ran away in her mind.

When Julie stopped paying attention and ran away the dreaming part of her mind started doing all the paying attention. Someone had to. When Julie's daddy went away the dreaming part of Julie's mind went back to doing what it usually did. But it remembered what happened. Because it was the dreaming mind and it works different than the waking mind, it stored the memories differently. Julie did not want to know anyway, she had run away, so the dreaming mind stored the memories in it's own place where she would not know about them.

Of course some stuff had happened before Julie ran away. Julie did something though. Everyone can block out things they do not want to think about. Kids are better at it than adults. Julie blocked what had happened before she ran away in her mind. So, when Julie woke up, she did not remember, and she was not afraid of daddy or confused.

The next time and the next and the next time Julie's daddy came to her room she ran away and her dreaming mind came forward and lived the bad things like it was her. It grabbed the things it needed out of her mind like how to say, "I love you, Daddy," when he wanted her to. It had to act like a waking mind and that made it into one after a while because it was doing the waking mind’s job. For short periods of time the dreaming mind was a waking mind.

That dreaming mind grew and developed it's own personality just like every waking mind does. It began to fell strange when daddy called it Julie, because it was not Julie, Julie had run away. So she decided on a name for herself. She named herself Sheila.

As the months turned into years and daddy came sometimes Sheila ran away sometimes too. When she did the dreaming mind started over again. That is how Daddy's Girl was born. She called herself Daddy's Girl because that is what daddy called her all the time in his whispers and so she thought that was her name.

Sheila learned to know when daddy would come at night. He would get up in the middle of something, the middle of a movie or a conversation, and stare at her without really looking at her just for a couple of seconds then pick something up and walk out of the room. It is something anyone might do if they are thinking about something, but every time Julie's daddy did it just that way he came to her room that night after everyone is asleep.

When Julie’s daddy did the thing he always did Sheila would know it and she would get so tense and restless Julie would not be able to sleep right away. Sometimes she would still be awake when daddy’s footsteps came in the hallway. Sheila had to shove her out of consciousness so she would not get hurt.

As Julie grew up Sheila wanted more and more to do things Julie did like go to the movies and talk with her friends and things. She had to do it without making Julie go away though because that would make Julie think she was going crazy or something. So Sheila just pushed really hard sometimes to make Julie say what she wanted to say or do what she wanted to do and she just soaked up what Julie was doing the best she could.

What was happening now was Sheila and Daddy's Girl and the others were having more and more feelings and their feelings were pushing on Julie more. Because they had grown up switching places without Julie knowing it, things inside were like a machine that is put together not quite the right way. It runs, but not very smoothly, and it is going to fall apart unless someone takes it apart and puts it together again.

You see everyone had different feelings and even different ideas about what was what. If a guy said hi to Julie sometimes it was hard for her to enjoy it and just say hi back because Daddy's Girl did not think he was just saying hi and felt sick and afraid and did not want anyone saying hi back to him.

Daddy’s Girl needs to learn that some people really are just saying hi and they are good people and things. Then she can be in sync with Julie. But she cannot be convinced too easy. Some things are so mixed up and different with the Julie selves that the only way to fix them is for Julie to find out they are there and for them to tackle the mixed up ideas together. What really makes that really hard though is that there are selves like Diddle Girl who are just frozen, and they cannot change much until they get unfrozen. The only way they can get unfrozen is for Julie to know about them and everyone else.

But Julie will think she is going crazy if she finds out about the other selves. She has to grow enough to be able to imagine them and know it is not being crazy to be DID. If she does not do that they could all fall apart. It is hard to keep a machine going that is not in sync.

So, now that Julie is thirtysomething she is starting to fall apart. Falling apart will make her start wondering what is wrong and after sometimes feel things that her imagination can only compare to being more than one person inside…

Julie is going to be together and functional again when she accepts she is DID and works though the painful stuff. She, all the Julie’s are going to get in sync and be happy and do things. They are going to be pretty amazing.

Sheila says they are pretty amazing already. They are DID.

© Veridian is a survivor living with and healing from DID.